Monday, December 10, 2007

Mob Rule Triumphs in Vancouver, Canada.

Canadian law at the federal level again proved itself to be next to non-existent for certain types of people. Usually the law in Canada doesn't apply equally to native Indians and women and those who feel really, really bad about the crimes they've committed. Some times the law doesn't apply equally to young psychopaths from other countries with a sizable voter bloc in Canada. And sometimes the law doesn't apply equally to those who are "young." The law doesn't apply to church leaders if they don't want to obey it. And it doesn't appy to those who can rouse a mob. An example? Today will do just fine.

"Mr. Singh came to Canada on a forged passport in 2003.... Last week the border services agency served Mr. Singh with papers ordering him to leave the country on Monday. The exclusion order, which enforces an earlier deportation order, required the 48-year-old Punjabi man to report to the airport for a flight to India.... [The Indian] government [he says] has falsely accused him of having links to terrorism.... Border services officials said they were not willing to wade into the crowd to escort Mr. Singh to his flight."

Today a mob of Sikhs at the aeroport stopped the federal government from deporting an illegal alien. The government ceded its natural and legitimate sovereignty to a mob at the gate. A small group of people kept the government from acting on its own orders. A mob of people attacked democracy in this country and got away with it, like most others here do with impunity. If the government refuses to act in its interest, which is the public interest, and instead accedes to the demands of a mob, then there is no legitimate government here. No, it's not the end of the world. There will be no revolution in the street. But this is another case of a government that is illegitimate. It can only remain so for a time and then the people will be forced to take its place: More mob rule. This kind of government behaviour below is what leads nations to civil war and anarchy.

RICHMOND, B.C. — The Canada Border Services Agency has stayed the deportation of a paralyzed Indian man after a standoff at Vancouver International Airport. "For safety and security reasons, Mr. Singh's deportation has been delayed," Derek Mellon, a spokesman for the agency, said Monday. He would not provide any information about when the removal order would be enforced.

About 500 people gathered Monday morning outside the departures level of the airport surrounding a van carrying Laibar Singh. By noon, the crowd had grown to over a thousand, many holding signs and chanting slogans. Supporters stood atop cars with a megaphone leading chants in English and Punjabi against the Conservative government and immigration officials. The agency was forced to delay Mr. Singh's deportation once it became clear officials would have to transport him through the crowd of supporters. Border services officials said they were not willing to wade into the crowd to escort Mr. Singh to his flight. For more than three hours, a standoff between supporters and security officials filled the street in front of the international departures area.

[....]

Harsha Walia of the human rights group No One is Illegal broke the news Mr. Singh's deportation had been stayed around 2 p.m.

[....]

Earlier, Ms. Walia disputed the border services agency's suggestion that the crowd was a safety hazard, calling it a smear tactic. "We are here as peaceful protesters. CBSA is welcome to go through the crowd. But they will have to answer to people's questions," she said. "They haven't been able to answer me or anyone else whether they believe this deportation is just. Their fear is not of violence, their fear is dealing with the legitimate concerns of people." She said the agency gave no timeline for further action.

"It's up to the government. The government has the ability to stop this deportation on a permanent basis if they don't want to keep playing this cat and mouse game." Within an hour of the announcement, the crowd was almost completely dispersed.

Swara Gill, head of the Kalgidhar Khalsa Darbar temple in Abbotsford where Mr. Singh had been staying, said the Khalsa Diwan Society in New Westminster, B.C., would be taking over Mr. Singh's care. Mr. Singh came to Canada on a forged passport in 2003but suffered a massive stroke three years later that left him a quadriplegic. Last week the border services agency served Mr. Singh with papers ordering him to leave the country on Monday.

He is fighting to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds because he fears he will not receive necessary medical care if he is returned to India, where he says that government has falsely accused him of having links to terrorism.

NDP MLA Raj Chouhan said deporting Mr. Singh would be inhuman. "People are very angry," Mr. Chouhan said. "They are very concerned about it. "I caution this government if they don't resolve this issue to the satisfaction of the community, this government will pay a big price in the next election."

The federal government in this country is surely not going to call out the troops-- if there are any in this province [not kidding] --to deal with a thousand Sikhs, a group known and proven to commit world-scale terrorist attacks on civilians in this country, in the skies, and abroad. The federal government caved in to coercive behaviour today. There's more and it's as bad or worse.You think Europe sucks? Look:

Last week, Ontario Auditor-General Jim McCarter reported that the province's Immigration and Citizenship Ministry has been dispensing millions of dollars in grants to ethnic groups under a process that is "not open, transparent or accountable." In many cases, groups got money simply because their members were chummy with ministry insiders.... Mr. McCarter's report does not merely highlight a failure of process in an otherwise sound government disbursement program. What the Auditor-General documents is nothing less than a taxpayer-funded political black market based on "ethnic" and religious vote-buying.

[....]

Awestruck Sikhs beheld $250,000 landing in a temple that was embroiled in a court battle over the alleged mismanagement of funds. Meanwhile, two grants of $100,000 each went to Sikh gurdwaras in Malton and Rexdale, where certain Sikh devotees promote the Khalistan movement and push to break up India. Photos of Sikh "martyrs" cover the Malton Gurdwara's walls. Even an image of Talwinder Singh Parmar is posted there, despite his masterminding 329 murders --including 280 Canadians and 136 children -- in the 1985 Air India bombing, the worst terrorist attack in this nation's history. It is the equivalent of funding a mosque that venerates Osama bin Laden.

The quest for votes means politicians are less willing to differentiate between moderates and extremists: Whoever is seen to control the microphone at the local temple -- and is therefore in a position to guide voting decisions -- gets the cash. Hence, federal and provincial politicians now shamelessly attend Sikh and Tamil events where terrorists are glorified. The same phenomenon may well explain why Liberal leader Stephane Dion had his party vote down crucial expiring provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act, a law introduced by his own party in 2001. This placated the Muslim and Sikh supporters who helped him win the Liberal leadership. They know the Act's demise will help scuttle the RCMP's last chance to definitively fix guilt in the Sikh terrorist plot against Air India Flight 182, and thereby deny any sense of closure to the families of the murdered victims.

What does a government do when a thousand chanting people show up to defy the people of the nation? For all the rubbish talk in the first story about "The People" it is plain that the people are not a group or groups of ethnic voters. The people are referred to in this country as "The Crown." The people here are those who vote for the government rather than a mob who can get away with anything they can get away with. This country is in deep trouble. In this country, in this country where people only obey laws if they feel like it, there is a coming chaos. There cannot be laws for one group, laws of a different kind for another. That's no law at all. Canada is on the verge of chaos.

1 comment:

The federal government in this country is surely not going to call out the troops-- if there are any in this province [not kidding] --to deal with a thousand Sikhs, a group known and proven to commit world-scale terrorist attacks on civilians in this country, in the skies, and abroad. The federal government caved in to coercive behaviour today.

-ahh, but Dag, Sikhs as a *group* haven't committed terrorism, they have only been divided about whether or not to champion the cause, regardless of the deadly means some use. In any case, I think you would find most Sikhs in Vancouver horrified by the Air India bombings, probably including those at the airport today.

I don't have much sympathy for these protesters today. I have more for the border services guys who wisely chose not to give the mob a reason to go totally wild. The sanctity of the law should not be upheld at all costs, when it will only cause unnecessary violence.

The law can patiently wait for a better day.

This post seems a little too apocalyptic. Civil disobedience can be a legitimate part of democracy. But the onus is on the civil disobedient to reveal the rightness of their cause by creating a scenario that reveals the moral limits of the present disposition of the law, showing a great reverence for the law, except in this one situation where upholding the letter of the law will bring it into disrepute.

The civil disobedient take a risk; they should take full responsibility for their actions, not allowing them to descend into violence, and showing us that by stepping in to a situation, they are stopping the rest of us from some collective act of violence that we are too blinded by unthinking reverence for the established law from seeing, a law that is not sufficiently respectful, in some area, of a necessary freedom.

In this case, it seems the Sikhs at the airport are losing, in your eyes, the risk of being seen as more complicit in violence than in deferring some violence to which society is unreasonably or unjustifiably blind.

But it might be suggested that they have some reason to think otherwise, if not a full or satisfactory reason. It will be interesting to see what other feedback they get from the rest of society.

In much of the world, I am on the side of the civil disobedient, e.g. the side of the apostate in Egypt. So I can't simply denigrate law-breaking as a general rule. We must consider also the morality of the law. I have no great problem with deporting this guy, but they may well be right that it is a death sentence to be paralyzed in India.